Other Unnecessary Things
by metacognitive
Summary: Stiles' divorce goes through on a Tuesday.
1. to flabbergast

Title: Other Unnecessary Things  
>Summary: Stiles' divorce goes through on a Tuesday.<br>Character(s): Stiles, Ensemble  
>Notes: V. self-indulgent but idk I think I do a good job keeping everyone IC throughout this. Granted this is all I have written so far so. Feedback is appreciated! Quote from Eartha Kitt.<p>

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><p><em>A relationship is a relationship that has to be earned!<em>  
><em>Not to compromise for...when you fall in love,<em>  
><em>what is there to compromise about?<em>

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><p>Stiles' divorce goes through on a Tuesday.<p>

It's March; Ana says she's taking Gwen to Disney World for spring break in three weeks. No, Stiles cannot come along. Yes, he can split the cost for Gwen's ticket. No, he does not need to pay for the entirety of their trip. Let it go, Stiles.

She's changing her name back to Cortés, she tells him, and if Gwen wants to change hers at eighteen then she is damn well going to do it. But until then she's a Stilinski, and both parents are going to be more than adequate in their involvement with her life.

He's still convinced Ana's going to leave Beacon Hills in a few months, when she can find a job somewhere else, and wonders if she'll be taking Gwen with her. Ana is frighteningly diplomatic about the entire thing.

She had sat him down very calmly in early August. She said, "Stiles, we are getting a divorce."

To say he was flabbergasted would underscore his utter horror.

Gwen was just starting seventh grade at the time; she firmly sided with her mother during the entire procedure. Ana, ever the saint, rather exasperatedly sat both natural-born Stilinski's down and said, "This is for the best. If anyone's at fault it's the adults in this situation. Gwen, I am not stealing you away to live off alimony. Stiles, do not fucking give me alimony."

"I didn't sign a pre-nup, though," Stiles had said; Ana looked like she wanted to strangle him, despite only being 5'3 with arms like noodles.

"You're both impossible," she had said instead, clawing at her own dark hair; "I'm going for a run."

Ana worked as a dietician at Beacon Hill's main hospital. Stiles was the town sheriff. Apparently the Hale girls (specifically, the younger one) used to call the woman partly responsible for the divorce, "The Sheriff's Mistress" which was grossly inconsiderate of everyone involved. Lydia told him he deserved it. Scott would just kind of shrug.

Derek, meanwhile, was busy having crazy hot werewolf sex, probably, on account of his wife was a Dominican goddess who somehow had less human blood then even the Hales, and whose legs were somehow just as unearthly. It was a wonder that they only had two daughters.

(In reality, he would receive half sympathetic looks from Derek, who was caught in the middle, mostly because his wife was somehow, some way, a pretty hardcore Catholic.

"Lapsed Catholic," she said, "but you need to REMEMBER YOUR VOWS.")

Stiles thought it all very unfair.

On Tuesday, however, Ana gives him a call and says, "Congrats, you're a free man. Pick me up at three, we're grabbing coffee."

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><p>Her scrubs are a deep purple. Gwen would probably describe them as a soulful fuchsia; she had a certain fondness for poetry that had developed recently, one that Ana had had for years. Stiles spent most of his free time looking over the young adolescent's English papers to remove the most flowery of his daughter's metaphors, something she was rather irritated about. Ana felt it important to reaffirm the bond between father and daughter.<p>

"Let's go to Wayne's," Ana says when she climbs into his car. His jeep perished sometime around the first break-up with Cora, and he'd gotten a flatbed truck after relying on carpools and bus systems for a few years. It was a good twenty years old, and it was somewhat comforting to know that something from before his marriage still existed today.

Material things, mind you. Other, er, relationships were still alive and running. Theoretically speaking.

"It's on me," Stiles says, after Ana's ordered her chicken dumplings and he's gotten vegetable fried rice; she gives him a deadpan look before turning on her heel to find a seat. He mentally prepares himself for a verbal beatdown. "Thanks," he says to the cashier-Wayne, owner of the restaurant, is from Hong Kong. He and his parents, along with his two younger sisters, moved to Wisconsin a good twenty years beforehand, just as Wayne (who never introduced himself as his real name) was starting university. He was a food science major.

Ana is sitting with her hands folded before her on the table when Stiles sits down. They blink at each other.

"God," she says, "but I am going to miss your mouth."

"What the fuck," Stiles says after a beat, but by then she's scrolling through something on her phone. "Are you coming onto me," he says, and she wads up a strip of napkin to toss at him.

"Get over yourself," she says, and for a split-second Stiles is in a graduate-level ethics class, meeting Ana Cortés for the first time all over again, except she's thinner with age now, and her hair isn't dyed a yellowish brown from incorrect henna usage. Lydia uses it now to hide her grays; Ana stopped dyeing it around the time they found out Gwen was going to be born.

Right around the time he realized he wasn't as in love with his wife as he needed to be.

.


	2. on backgrounds

Title: Other Unnecessary Things  
>Summary: Stiles' divorce goes through on a Tuesday.<br>Character(s): Stiles, Ensemble  
>Notes: This came at me in a rush. Quote from Marilyn Monroe.<p>

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><p><em>It's far better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone.<em>

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><p>See, the thing is, Stiles didn't plan this. The current scenario that was, somehow, his life in the present was absolutely nothing like what he had planned, say, twenty years ago. He would have been around twenty three at the time.<p>

Which of course meant that it was right after the second break up from Cora. He had probably contemplating spiraling into a depression, if Stiles were being honest, but considering the amount of PTSD everyone was suffering his jokes about mental illness were definitely in bad taste.

Especially considering the existence of Malia Tate, but that's beside the point.

It's probably best to start at the beginning, because a lot of things in Stiles' life can be misleading. He knows this, accepts this, but still resents it because in all honesty it's really not fair. That said, he is still mostly responsible for the dissolution of his marriage and several of the relationship issues that sprung up even prior to said matrimony.

Case in point: Malia Tate.

She is not the first issue, no, however it was with her that the issues first came to light. Cora Hale is a patient woman, yes, but she's also incredibly protective. All it took was one flippant action regarding her brother before she had half a finger imbedded in the were-coyote's jugular. Malia survived, of course. But that's when the tensions between the youngest Hales and the rest went down. Stiles isn't too good with werewolf conventions, but the kind of attention that each of them were giving the other was very much unhealthy, and given all the evil that Peter had done to all of them? There was definitely some bad blood between he and his niece and nephew.

And Lydia, redheaded goddess of his heart no matter the platonic sense of that relationship, was never one to let sleeping dogs lie. She had managed to save Allison, who refused to let anyone responsible for the awfulness that had been a part of their lives for so long live. Stiles counts himself lucky that she differentiated between who he was and who the Nogitsune pretended to be; he still had trouble doing that himself. Malia, upon learning the rather uncomfortable truths that surrounded her existence, wasn't exactly up for playing nice after that.

To summarize: Lydia didn't let Allison die, Allison couldn't let Peter live, and Stiles chose the people he'd die for rather than the girl he didn't think could do the same.

She's married to some Alpha up in Nunavut, last Stiles heard.

This is in turn led to Cora and Stiles finally becoming _Cora and Stiles_, which was nice for a very long time, even after that one memorable day she had a hand down his pants just as Derek was walking into their shared home. That wasn't quite so fun. Nevertheless, they had approximately two years of smooth sailing, during which Stiles went to Reed College for a PoliSci degree. It was during his junior year that the first breakup occurred, during which he shacked up with Paul Stanley and his girlfriend, Bridget Barton. He's pretty sure he somehow managed to reenact the plot of Vicky Cristina Barcelona however, by spring break of that year he and Cora were back together, this time with a far better emotional understanding of their relationship and with much more effort being put into their own mental health.

It went like this:

Derek married Val Malabe when he was twenty-seven and she was twenty-eight. Fast forward approximately a year, and Val was pregnant with their first daughter. It was December/January; Stiles doesn't remember the exact date, but he remembers how he found out. He'd gone to see Derek at the little apartment he still rented out; he and the misses were living in San Francisco, where he worked at a museum and Val at a private school. At the time there wasn't anyone living in the rented-out apartment, and he and Val were visiting for the holidays.

He ran into Cora as she was walking out of the elevator. They'd been broken up since September.

"Stiles," she had said, and from the look in her eyes he knew that she'd forgotten; that she was caught up in something so big, so good, that all the awkwardness that existed between them had disappeared. It was a lot of awkwardness, truth be told. He wanted to be her everything more than anything else, but she had always done her best to keep him out of it.

There's a certain pain to loving a Hale, he would tell Scott, who knew and yet did not know how exactly it felt.

When Cora saw Stiles that day, however, it only triggered raw joy. Derek had just told her that there would be a new baby in a little more than six months. She should have noticed, but she'd never been around pregnant women early enough to smell the change, especially not when she was traveling as often as she was. She exited the elevator, saw Stiles, and something inside her went, _oh_, and she smiled. Beamed, really, stepping forward with something akin to a lunge to get her arms around him. He caught her easily—for a human, his instincts were always great—arms warm around her waist. She felt a spike of desire, one Stiles couldn't notice.

She was excessively warm in his arms, as was her tone. She said, "They're having a baby," awe plain in her voice. Her hands cradled the knob of his spine. "The first Hale in over twenty years, I—" and then she seemed to notice what she was doing. Who she was holding. Who it was that made her think, maybe there should be more than one Hale at a time.

"I," she said again, and disentangled herself from him. His arms fell limply to his sides.

"That's," he said after a moment, cleared his throat; his eyes were fixated on her right earlobe. She stared at his mouth. "That's awesome, great," he said, "wow. I'm. I'll go say my congratulations right now, actually. I was—just on my way to see them. I. Yeah."

"Great," she said, eyes focused on a freckle just under his eye now. "They'll love that." Her tone was always slightly sarcastic. Even in bed Stiles had always wondered just how genuine her reactions had been. They were silent together for a moment. "I'll see you," she said to him finally, even if both knew it was a lie.

"See you," he said instead, and as the doors of the elevator closed with him inside them, he watched her swish away. She hadn't been wearing a coat, and the white tee she wore had ridden up as he'd held her. He closed his eyes.

Later, it would go bad. But that was after, after they'd made love everywhere from her bedroom in the new Hale house in San Francisco, or the car he'd rented to go see her, or the beach an hour out from Beacon Hills, or even the Nemeton which was and will always be a spectacularly awful idea.

She'd made a Marvel joke while he'd still been inside her. He'd wanted to cry.

Ana was nothing like Cora. She was several inches shorter, and she was constantly trying to get her hair the perfect shade of auburn by using henna. She always used too much chamomile, however, and the color never came out right.

Stiles had gone to CSU, Chico for his graduate degree. Granted, he was short enough on cash that he wasn't sure if he would be able to afford all the classes necessary, but he saw the advantages that could come with a Masters in Public Administration of Local Government. He'd always wanted to be a cop. Ana was there getting hers in Nutritional Science, as she'd completed a nursing degree there already. They'd taken the same ethics class, and by then _Stiles and Cora_ were just Stiles and Cora; asking the pretty girl from Lombard, IL out to dinner seemed like as good an idea as any.

He ended up being wrong, mind you, but at least there weren't any hard feelings. Basically, Ana was (and is) a champ, something Stiles had learned pretty quick.

.

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><p>an: it was a Groot joke and im not sorry


	3. an impossible task

Title: Other Unnecessary Things  
>Summary: Stiles' divorce goes through on a Tuesday.<br>Character(s): Stiles, Ensemble  
>Disclaimer: Not mine!<br>Notes: I wrote this in a coffee shop instead of doing homework. Quote from "I Ask the Impossible" by Ana Castillo.

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><p><em>Love me as your most treasured childhood memory...Love me withered as you loved me new.<em>

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><p>Here is what will happen:<p>

Gwen is eighteen years old now. She will turn nineteen in November, but it is August, and she is in a white gown, silver-patterned bodice and an ivory sash separating it from the plain white skirt. Her hair is loose and to her shoulders in soft waves, silver shimmer framing her eyes. She looks beautiful, so much like Ana and so much like Claudia that Stiles loses his breath a little, pausing in the doorway to watch his daughter look at herself in the mirror. She turns around once she catches sight of him.

"I would have paid for a church wedding, you know," he says to her, because they are in an empty office at the courthouse when there's a perfectly usable church just a mile or so away. Gwen rolls her eyes at him, taking a seat at one of the little benches still in the room, motioning for him to join her. He tries to keep his jacket from wrinkling as he sits down, nervous now under his daughter's gaze.

She says, "I never did apologize for treating you the way I did, during the divorce."

Stiles' head snaps up; this isn't the conversation he envisioned himself having. It's his only daughter's wedding day, and they are in a barren room, and she is apologizing for actions years old.

"I don't know if I should be apologizing or not," Gwen continues, and her teeth are white against the frost pink of her lipstick; "I don't want to, if I'm honest. But I don't think it's fair to have been angry for so long without you understanding why."

Stiles says, "You have nothing to apologize for," and Gwen just shakes her head at him.

"Here's the thing, Dad," she says to him, "I do. I was just, awful, just so cruel without needing to be. I'm sorry. And I'm sorry for turning what happened into a bigger thing than it needed to be, because obviously you and Mom are doing just fine, all things considered. And I'm sorry for being such a bitch to Cora, but I'll need to tell her that myself."

He makes in a noise in his throat when she swears; Gwen rolls her eyes at him in response.

"But do you get why?" she says, and doesn't give him a chance to answer, "I was mad. You cheated, Dad, that's not okay. But I just. I was so mad about everything, and I was mad at Mom for being so calm about it, and I just focused all that anger on you. And I shouldn't have, because the divorce blindsided us both, but. Just." She sighs, cups her chin with her hand. Her eyes are shining, and Stiles reaches out to touch the side of her face. She leans into it and smiles.

"I felt like it was a personal affront, you know?" she says, half-laughing in embarrassment. She looks down at her lap, where one hand is clutching at her skirt. In one swift movement she smooths it out, then looks up at Stiles. "I thought, what if that happens to me?" she says to him, and Stiles feels his belly swoop, "I was, what, twelve? Thirteen? I don't know. But I mean, you never want to see your parents' marriage fall apart, and you never want it to be because of something completely preventable, and you never want the same to happen to you."

She looks towards the door; Stiles left it cracked open, and he says to her, "Alex looks great," and she laughs.

"Of course he does," she says, smile still on her mouth, "all the McCalls do."

"He would never do that to you," Stiles says in response, and there's a twist to her mouth when she looks back to him.

"I know," she says, "Dad, I love him."

He brushes his thumb below her eye, trying not to smudge whatever makeup she's got on for the day. "I know," he says, and when he hugs her his hands are almost capable of encircling her waist, the expansion of her lungs as clear as the skies outside.

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><p>But that won't happen for years that will feel like lifetimes, years that will pass while Stiles is bridging broken a relationship and threatening the only McCall boy with bodily harm, much to the embarrassment of everyone.<p>

Today, _today_ it is Tuesday, and when Stiles makes it back to his office, Allison Argent is lounging at his desk.

"Shouldn't you be denying all the firearms requests we get sent?" Stiles says to her, and she just stretches out, a pressure mark at the corner of her jaw where her hand had been pressed.

"I've already finished that for the day," she says to him, "I wanted to catch you before I went home."

"Do you ever work a full day here," he asks, but it's not much of a question; they both know the answer. Allison still runs the family business (_including_ the hunter duties), and really her role as a part of the town's police force is to keep the people safe from themselves. She does auxiliary work in the mornings, given her own experience with firearms, and spends the rest of the day hooking up security systems. Lydia's busy at town hall most days.

He's barely taken a seat when Allison starts talking, in the middle of reaching towards a stack of cases that he's trying to look over again (mostly because old habits die hard).

"So you're a free man now," Allison says, and he looks up sharply. There's no hostility on her face; her expression is more curious than anything. He raises an eyebrow at her, an action she mirrors back at him.

When he rubs his hand across his jaw he's surprised to find himself stubbly. "I guess I am," he tells Allison, and she tilts her head at him.

"How do you feel?" she says, and he shrugs. She's dressed in all dark colors, boots up to her calves. She looks professional, and Stiles has been a cop for over fifteen years and still feels like he's playing dress up most days.

"I just saw Ana," he says instead of answering, and Allison snorts.

"Of course you did," she says, "Stiles, you couldn't have done more if you'd tried."

He bristles. "I did try," he tells her, tone agitated, "I tried my best, you know."

Allison gets a faraway look on her face, mouth tightening; "Sometimes someone's best isn't good enough." She fixes him with a steely glance. "Don't lash out at me, Stiles," she says, "we both know what brought this on. Ana isn't angry."

"I'm not Ana, am I," Stiles says, looking back down at the folders full of information he stil hasn't made sense of. There's a lot of stuff like that, he tells himself, and tries hard not to let himself flinch.

"No," she says instead of taking the hard line of his jaw as a sign to leave, "no, you'd be far meaner to yourself. Anyone would, I think." Stiles laughs, and the sound physically hurts.

"You've met my daughter, right?" and Allison's expression softens.

"I know, Stiles," her voice is soothing again. Stiles doesn't deserve it.

"I don't know what to do about any of this," he says after a moment of neither speaking. "I'm. I've failed, you know. As a father and a husband. And. I don't know, I always thought that was the kind of thing I would be able to do."

Allison picks up a paperweight from his desk. She weighs it in her hands, delicately switching from her left to her right. "There's not anything for me to say to you, Stiles," she says. "Have you talked to Cora?"

"No," he says, and it comes out too fast. Allison doesn't comment on it.

"You probably should," she says, pointedly, and then gets to her feet. "I think I'm going to ask Lydia to marry me."

Stiles looks away from the cold cases at that; "Yeah?" He feels lighter, all of a sudden.

"Yeah," she says, and starts grinning giddily. Stiles cracks a smiles back at her, remembering how impossible that must have seemed years ago.

"When are you popping the question?" he says instead of voicing all those thoughts, and she shrugs. Her eyes are bright.

"When I find a ring good enough," and then she leans over to press a kiss to Stiles' brow. Her hands are warm against his jaw.

"You're going to be okay," she says to him, voice soft, "trust me."

.

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><p>an: I sat down and wrote an outline so! Ideally I will update once a week from now on.


	4. fine dining

Title: Other Unnecessary Things  
>Summary: Stiles' divorce goes through on a Tuesday.<br>Character(s): Stiles, Ensemble  
>Disclaimer: Not mine!<br>Notes: Midterms! Someone help me. Quote from "One Last Poem for Richard" by Sandra Cisneros. I lied about weekly updates, next one will be up right around Thanksgiving most likely whoops.  
>Also! I always imagined Ana to look like Odette Annable, Older!Gwen a bit like Emilia Clarke.<p>

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><p>I forget the reason, but I loved you once,<br>remember?

* * *

><p>It is Tuesday and Stiles' ex-wife has already told him off about the way she was treated during their marriage—"like an obligation, Stiles, like a mistake,"—and to straight-up call the catalyst to the bullshit that their relationship became.<p>

"Stiles," she said, halfway through her food with a smear of soy sauce at the corner of her mouth, "I don't care. I mean, I'm upset that you decided to avoid facing our marital problems in a mature matter, but you and I both know that this marriage has been over for a lot longer than the however many months we've been settling everything. You could have handled yourself infinitely better—you're a great father, okay, shitty husband notwithstanding."

He had looked at her mournfully as she pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Fucking call her," she finally said, and Stiles answered, "You've always had the mouth of a sailor."

"I am going to kill you," she said calmly, and then Stiles dropped her off at the hospital again and drove back to work.

It's six pm and Stiles still hasn't gone home. Allison left immediately after their oddly-intimate discussion of marriage, and he's supposed to visit Scott and the kids for dinner in half hour. There's still a pile of papers on his desk.

None are urgent, most old cases he's going through to make sure everything was filed away correctly, but still. He's much more apt to finish up his work now, thank you very much. University forced that into him like a drenched sheep.

"Fuck it," he says to himself, and then locks up the office before heading to his car. The drive is quiet, as quick as it's always been. Melissa, bless her soul, is living in a very nice assisted-living facility in the heart of town. When she'd told Scott she was leaving him the house he was heartbroken.

("But we said we would always take care of each other," he had said, mouth wobbling.

"Scott," Melissa had said, "you make sixty-k a year. Kira makes fifty. I have a very nice 401k because nurses, when they have worked as long and as hard as I have, can make pretty decent cash once they pay off the house their piece of shit ex-husband left them to deal with. I am going to retire in my assisted-living facility. Do not ruin my dream.")

The grass in the McCall-Yukimura yard is half-frozen, crunchy greens and browns underfoot. Stiles doesn't want to walk in, choosing instead to linger in front of the frosted screen door.

He loves the McCall-Yukimura kids: Haruhi, soon to be seventeen and still taking too many PSAT practice tests, tall and nearly the splitting image of her maternal grandmother; Alex, who is definitely making eyes at Gwen and needs to be stopped; and Mel, in the sixth grade and already stirring up her classmates. Great kids, Stiles swears. He loves their parents just as much, too.

With the exception of the youngest, however, they all have the killer instincts of something very-much-not-human, and so before Stiles can even bring himself to knock the door is being swung open.

"Stiles," Ruhi says brightly, dressed in what appears to be a darkly-colored sweater-dress and tights. Her hair is up, eyes lined black. Mel peeks out from behind her, mischievous expression lighting something in Stiles.

"Is that Stiles?" he hears Scott yell from inside, and then Kira and Alex are poking their heads out from the kitchen. Kira has a smudge of flour on her cheek, and her smile is genuine.

"Stiles!" she says, as if she hadn't heard her husband, "I'd hug you but my hands are covered in egg yolk."

"Zucchini or eggplant parmesan?" Stiles says, stepping into the house and carefully shaking off his boots. Ruhi takes his jacket from him, Kira's face lighting up at the question.

"Zucchini," she says brightly, and as Alex zips back into the kitchen to finish whatever task his parents have set him to, lowers her voice to a whisper-shout, "you know how Scott feels about eggplants."

"They're unnatural!" he shouts from the kitchen, where, if Stiles listens carefully, there's the sizzle of oil in a pan and running water. "Also, uh. Is this batch done?"

Mel and Ruhi make faces at each other as they tug Stiles along to the dining room, Kira ducking back to save the males of her family from ruining what should be a delicious dinner.

"I could help your folks," Stiles says to them, unconsciously mirroring the grotesque expressions they're making at each other, and Mel flaps a hand at him.

"They're grownups too, Uncle Stiles," she says to him, and her voice is still at that squeaky phase that Gwen grew out of over the summer. Stiles wants to hug all the girls in his life very, very badly all of a sudden.

"I'm aware," he says instead of reclaiming the title of Creeper Uncle, and Ruhi says, "They're almost done, don't worry. What do you want to drink?"

"Beer," he says immediately, as if it weren't Tuesday, and Ruhi just pats his head as she makes her way to the kitchen. She'll be getting him ginger ale instead.

Four years ago, Cora ran off to the DR. It was one of the Other Times that, technically, were a breakup, but given that Stiles was a married man at the time (and for most of the Other Times as well), he didn't like to refer to them as breakups. He didn't like to admit he was with Cora, honestly, and tried to convince himself that we wasn't—unless he was physically with her, in which case that thought process went out the window.

It went out the window most days, actually.

But, it had been one of many breakups since Gwen was born, and she ran off to the DR for approximately ten months, during which she shacked up with a ciguapa.

The legends say they're women, with dark skin and dark eyes and dark hair, teeth like a predator. They are predators, eating men for the fun of it. One of them, Nena or Nina or whatever pet name that rolled off Cora's tongue like a pearl when she came back, was enamored enough with the she-wolf to ask for her hand. Or something like it, at least. There were things that could be done, incantations from a local witch, black and white magic and whatever ancient rituals that still existed in the island.

The baby's name is Serafina, and she is three years old. Her hair is dark, but it's thicker than Cora's has ever been—at least, that's what it looks like in the pictures that Stiles has seen of her. He's only actually met the toddler once, when she was barely starting to sit up on her own. Cora had been on the island for over a year, long enough to have a baby with a still too-big head be born and hit the vital part of the language-learning process of an infant's life.

It had been a shit show. The mountains apparently weren't safe for anyone, let alone a newly-born ciguapa child, and Cora had left the country after enacting various safe charms on both the baby and her other mother.

Cora doesn't talk about whether or not they worked on Nena/Nina/name like a pearl on her tongue. Stiles tries not to think about how much love she (they?) must have had for Cora and the baby to send them away, how much tradition must have been seeped into the wilderness where the ciguapas made their home that she stayed to combat the darker forces that were trying to take them down.

Serafina is both of her mothers' daughter through and through, but her skin is not the blue-black that the ciguapas are known for; rather, she's caught a shade lighter than Melissa, bronzed skin still baby soft to the touch. She'd been that same color when Cora came tumbling out of her two a.m. flight in the middle of June, Stiles waiting for her. She hadn't brought anything but baby supplies.

She'd straightened up immediately upon seeing Stiles, blue eyes narrowed, and had hitched the baby closer to her than she already was. She was wearing a blue sweater, white tee and jeans. Flip-flops, too, and a white blanket covering Serafina from head to toe.

Stiles, despite it being one of those Other Times, wanted to do nothing more than hide the two of them away, where it might never be daytime and the real world could be kept at bay.

Since the accidental meeting at the airport, however, Cora has been good with keeping her daughter away from the man she sees (on and off, mind you) behind his wife's back. Stiles only asked after the baby once, when he and Cora had gotten back together, around three months after her return from the Dominican. He'd asked after Serafina's other parent, too, and Cora had immediately kicked him out of bed; his hip had a purple-blue bruise on it from the force with which he hit the ground, and it wouldn't surprise him if that's when Ana's suspicions started, or were proven, or if she was in any way made aware of the things he was getting up to with Cora at the time.

He wonders why it took so long for her to say something; most days he's disappointed that he couldn't.

Then again, Stiles muses, as Ruhi puts a can of ginger ale and a glass of water in front of him, Kira sashaying in with pasta, Alex behind her with silverware, it's not like he's been good to Cora over the past few months, either.

* * *

><p>After dinner, Stiles insists on helping wash dishes. The kids don't oppose, of course, with Ruhi zipping upstairs to make a phone call (probably Mirta Hale, but that's something everyone who knows the two of them would rather not deal with) and Alex complaining about having to finish his homework. Mel sticks her tongue out at him, says, "Shoulda done it earlier, I finished before Mom or Dad even got <em>home<em>," before squawking at his half-hearted swat at her.

Kira sighs long-sufferingly before winking at Stiles. She herds her youngest two into the living room, where Stiles and Scott can hear her telling Mel to do some reading before watching any TV. Alex asks her to help him with his homework.

When Stiles turns to Scott (and, of course, the mess of dishes that await), the man is grinning. He's got a bit of stubble going on. Stiles grins back.

"'Sup, dude?" Stiles says, and Scott just starts laughing.

"Stiles," he says, all affectionate, and god, Stiles loves his family, all of it, from his father to his (ex)wife and daughter to the McCall-Yukimuras and beyond. "How you holding up?" Scott says to him, and his eyes are worried and the smile on his face is more concerned than it is happy. Stiles can feel himself choking up.

"I'm alright, buddy," he says, and Scott purses his mouth. He looks just like Melissa when he does that.

"Your divorce went through today, didn't it?" he says, and Stiles moves passed him to get the water running. The pans are going to need to soak.

"Stiles," Scott says, this time a bit exasperated, and Stiles clenches his teeth. Ana used to call it the jaw thing; Cora always claimed to love it.

"Yeah, Scott," Stiles finally says, and starts scrubbing at the dishes in front of him. Scott makes to move towards him, no doubt to force eye contact, and Stiles fixes him with a glare.

"My wife left me," Stiles says to him, "I've got a nice little hotel room to go back to tonight, I don't know if Ana's going to stay in town once Gwen's done with school this year, and everyone is saying I need to fucking call Cora. I shouldn't. She shouldn't even be a part of this. My wife left me."

Scott raises an eyebrow before grabbing a little wash towel off the counter. He shoves at Stiles' hip once to wedge himself next to the sink, and starts drying the dishes that Stiles is admittedly washing in a half-assed way. Scott is the best friend.

"You cheated on your wife for over ten years—on and off, I know, and it was 'just Cora' as you said—but uh, man." Scott grins at Stiles, who wants nothing more than to bash his head against the porcelain in his hands right now. There's a stick of sauce and crumbs that he can't scrub away.

Scott laughs at him, "Stiles. Breathe. You're divorced, Ana isn't going anywhere anytime soon, Kira's found some studios near the school for you to look at, and Derek's bringing the family up for their spring break. I think Val might be pregnant."

"They're both nearly fifty, Scott," Stiles says, moving on to wash some cutlery. He feels more than sees Scott shrug next to him.

"They're still having sex like they want more kids," Scott points out, and Stiles snorts.

"Have you seen the two of them?"

"True," Scott concedes, "but. Hey, seriously. Don't stress about the things you can't change, okay? I don't know much about what you might be feeling, but I know how Gwen must feel. Everything sucks."

"Yup," Stiles says, popping the 'p.' He shuts the water off. There's a few pans still, but they're sticky with butter and oil and whatever it was that Kira had been cooking with—egg yolk. Flour. He looks to Scott.

He still looks like he's barely pushing thirty, and Stiles woke up this morning to new gray hair at his temples.

"I love you, Stiles," Scott says, and Stiles ducks his head. "Call her," he says, "you act like she doesn't love you too. Things will get better, like they always have. That's life. You keep going."

"My life is a shit show," Stiles says, "but I mean, that's mostly my fault."

Scott looks at him for a second. "Werewolves?"

"Shut _up_, Scott," Stiles says, but he's standing straight now, smiling.

.

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><p>an: in case you didn't notice I don't know anything about how the police force works or how divorce proceedings go through (though in California it takes at least six months! I did in fact google that) so take everything in here with a grain of salt. Also, if Kate Argent can still be alive after FOUR FUCKING SEASONS (basically five lbr) then two women can have a baby using made-up ancient magic thank you have a good weekend.


	5. rooms

Title: Other Unnecessary Things  
>Summary: Stiles' divorce goes through on a Tuesday.<br>Character(s): Stiles, Ensemble  
>Disclaimer: Not mine!<br>Notes: Oscar Wilde is everything and the quote makes me laugh esp. re: Stiles and Cora, so. Also this is much shorter than the last chapter whoops but the next should be ~2.5-3K!

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><p><em>Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.<em>

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><p>It's a little bit after eight-thirty when Stiles gets to the tiny hotel room that he's been living in since the beginning of September. Ana had been adamant in having him just stay in the house, didn't care who slept in the guest room; Stiles, however, has seen too many movies to be alright with living in the same house as someone who definitely wasn't going to change her mind over the course of the dissolution of their marriage. He moved out a few weeks after the divorce proceedings began.<p>

His hotel is a ten-minute drive from Ana and Gwen, and according to the bellhop (who he has, in fact, added on Facebook due to knowing each other way too long at this point), the presence of a police officer is comforting for people who choose to stay at there. When he'd been moving his bare necessities over, Lydia had shown up just as he was insisting to the staff that he did _not_ need any help.

She had, with a single eyebrow raised and lips painted plum, proceeded to inform every single staff member in the lobby that, should any rumors regarding Stiles' current living status begin to circulate over the following weeks, she would singlehandedly take down each and every one of them through a series of embarrassing and expensive lawsuits.

"I'm dating a security heiress," she told one the manager, who at well over six feet tall had cowered at Lydia's mere presence, "I went to law school. I will _end_ all of you, and I will enjoy every second of it."

So, while knowledge of Stiles' divorce is common knowledge in the present, the exact circumstances are very much limited to the Stilinski family's inner circle, and maybe Scott's dad, who is an asshole and retired to Florida with his much younger, much newer wife. Melissa still can't stand him.

The room in which he's been living is, surprisingly, not entirely bad. It's very bland, of course, but there's a queen-sized bed, a little nook with a desk and very tiny couch, along with a cheap TV and various end-tables and lamps for Stiles to use while stressing over bills and statements and cases from work. Lydia, that same day he had been moving his stuff in, had taken a look at it and gagged.

"Let me move you somewhere nicer," she'd said to him, in her pencil skirt and pressed blouse, "somewhere bigger. You're a grown man."

"I'm going to be here long-term," he had said, very carefully, very calmly. His tone came out a bit too flat. Lydia blinked at him. Then she nodded, very knowingly.

"Ana fed up with your cheating bullshit then, huh?" she said to him, voice saccharine. He shut the door in her face, and they didn't speak to one another for two weeks, until he stopped by the Argent's residence with coconut macaroons that she devoured in front of him, without offering to share. She had smiled, lips and shirt covered in crumbs.

"I'm an asshole," he had told her, "literally everything leading up to this moment has been a dick move by me."

"I know," she had said, and when Allison came home a few hours later the two of them were finishing up a twelve-pack.

The room seems especially cold and empty today, bed carefully made and yet another little chocolate square awaiting him. Stiles really wants some beer, but given that he spends forty dollars a night just living there, he's really got to watch how he spends his money. Then again, 1200 a month is probably how much he'd be paying on a nice condo, though he's still paying for half the mortgage.

He could have been like Rafael McCall, who left enough unpaid debts to seriously fuck Melissa over, but given that Stiles was busy cheating on his wife for fourteen-ish years, he's pretty sure they're at the same level of asshole. It's pretty disappointing.

Rather than let that thought process continue, Stiles ducks into the bathroom to use the bathroom and take a shower. Ana had always been quirky about using public bathrooms, a habit that Gwen had adapted and somehow made worse. She refused to go to sleep-away camp in grade school, during one of the Other Times that Stiles had desperately tried to use to rekindle his and Ana's marriage. In truth it gave both of them the distraction of taking care of their child rather than Ana trying to make sense of what would have surely been _incredibly_ odd behavior from her husband, even by Stiles' standards.

In retrospect, Stiles would have asked for a divorce after London. Definitely London, he thinks to himself once he's out of the shower, rubbing a palm across the barely-there stubble at his jaw.

He hadn't even turned thirty yet when Jackson fucking Whittemore called one day in the middle of the night. He had been married about four years by then, and the leaves were barely starting to change color.

"Fuck," Stiles says out-loud. It's too early to deal with this shit. He looks at his phone instead. It's not even nine yet.

Everyone was saying to call her. Not Lydia, whose opinion he trusted and abhorred most, but that was probably because she was busy doing whatever it was she did as an up-and-coming worker with city hall. She was running for term in the next election, which was great considering their current mayor had pretty much said from the get-go that he wasn't much interested in any significant changes to the city.

Beacon Hills was great, manageable, even. But Lydia had a whole system of things that she wanted changed, and she knew she'd be the best thing to happen to Beacon Hills since maybe Scott McCall was born.

He needs to call Cora. He definitely does not want to call Cora. The last time they spoke was three days after he'd moved into the hotel room. It had been a bad conversation.

"Goddamn it," he swore, along with a few other choice words that he really should not be saying so loudly to an empty room. His reputation was probably really shitty as it is; Stiles is not actually sure how he ever made it to being sheriff in the first place.

By the time there's a dial-tone in his ear, he is about 97% sure hanging up is a much better alternative to actually calling Cora. The other 3% is hinging on the fact that if he doesn't, he's pretty much guaranteed to be dealt an angry Lydia by Allison, who's a bit too much like House in that she has tabs on literally everyone in her life. She claims it makes her sleep better; Stiles is more concerned with what kind of dirt she's dug up on him (not that it could be worse than what _everyone_ already knows).

He's just convinced himself to hang up when someone answers.

"Hellooo?" a tinny voice says, and he knows it's the baby. Something aches inside him. Immediately after there's a woman's voice—Cora—and then she says, "Stiles?" with something like disbelief.

God, but he's missed the way she sounds. He almost can't get the words out, so overcome with feeling (which is awful, by the way), yet he says, "Hey," husky and low. There's silence for a moment; no doubt she's suspicious. Angry. Wondering what the fuck he's doing. Stiles doesn't blame her—he asks himself that most days.

"Did you need something?" she finally says, and there's a wryness to the way she says the words that makes him straighten.

"No," he says, then backtracks, "I mean. Yes? No? Not. Not really. I."

She remains hushed for a moment, and he can hear the sounds of what must be a child's

The line is silent for a long moment, and then he hears her sigh, deep and exasperated and probably more tired of him than she's ever been before. Stiles would deserve the reaction; he almost hopes she wants nothing to do with him anymore, because it would be something he feels he's earned at this point. What else should he expect, really?

It would kill him, but that's really all he amounts to at this point, he thinks.

"Stiles," Cora finally says, "look. It's getting late and-I need to do get everything ready for tomorrow. Do you need something?"

He takes a breath; lets it out slow. "My divorce went through," he says, and sounds strangely hollow. Cora goes quiet, the baby's sounds passing through the phone. He holds his breath, bites his lip. This is the worst day of his life, much worse than what happened in London.

"Stiles," Cora says, tone caught between pain and irritation, "I don't-what do you want me to say?"

"I can come down," he says without thinking, and she says, "No, that's not necessary."

He goes quiet; maybe it is the end. It makes sense.

"Why won't you let me meet her?" he says instead of letting himself cry, and on the line Cora's voice crackles.

"She doesn't need someone in her life who isn't going to be a permanent fixture."

"I want to be."

"Oh?" she says, voice slick like Lydia's gets when she's planning a man's downfall, "and how do you expect to do that? Divorced single parent, hm. And how's Gwen?" Her tone is biting, and Stiles ducks his head, despite her not being able to see him.

"Cora—"

"Don't," she says, and then, "now, is there anything that I really need to hear from you?"

"Come up," Stiles says, and she laughs into the phone harshly. He can hear her moving around on the line. A door shuts, the sounds of child's play fading.

"Six months," Cora hisses, and the anger is palpable; Stiles is sure he would choke on it if he were standing in the same room as her. "Six months since you try to call me or—or anything, nothing from you-"

"I know, I know, I'm—"

"Shut up. Months, half a year, what the fuck is this about you coming down? What? What, like being divorced makes a difference now?"

"I'm sorry."

"_Shut up_. I don't care about the divorce. That's your life, not mine. I knew what I was getting into and you bet your ass I regret it. It's not as if it ever stopped you—"

"You regret it."

"Shut _up_." Her voice breaks on the words. "God, I hate you. Don't fucking visit me. Just. Don't do anything. Don't call me, I don't want. I don't have the patience to deal with this. With you."

He's quiet for a moment. His heart hurts with sharp realization. "I love you."

"You fucker," she says, and hangs up.

* * *

><p>an: when will his reflection show who he is inside? I don't know.


End file.
